Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“So, what is on the docket for the first night of my grand return to the Pacific Northwest?” Frasier asked with dramatic flair, “Dinner at Au Pied du Cochon, or perhaps Le Cigare Volant?”
“Actually, no--”
“Gui Savoy?”
“No--”
“Les Petits Oiseaux, then?”
“Actually--”
“Les Habitants? Chez Henri? Coeur du Singe?”
“No--”
“Well, then. I have named every one of my favorite restaurants in this city. If we are not going to any of them, then just what did you have in mind?”
Niles flexed his fingers around the steering wheel and fought back a snarky retort by reminding himself that his brother had just gotten off of a long flight (and, perhaps more importantly, they were stuck in this car together for quite a while if traffic didn’t improve soon). “Actually, I had planned on having dinner at home tonight.”
Frasier gave a look of approval, “What are you cooking then?”
“Actually, I’m not the one cooking--”
Frasier’s look of approval quickly melted to one of pity, “Oh, Niles, I just had a four hour flight. I don’t think that Daphne’s cooking would sit well on my stomach after all that travel.”
Niles tried to hide his eye roll by checking his side mirror before responding, “No no, David has planned dinner tonight.”
“David?!” Frasier echoed his nephew’s name, eyebrows raised in surprise.
Niles nodded, “You know he’s been working at L’Escalier on weekends for about two years now.”
“Yes,” Frasier said, before skeptically adding, “Bussing tables .”
“Yes, well, it seems that the cooking bug bit him,” Niles explained, refusing to allow his brother’s attitude dampen his pride, “He’s been taking cooking classes at school. He insisted that he plan and prepare dinner for us tonight.”
Frasier’s skepticism seemed to evaporate, “How could I refuse my favorite nephew?”

Traffic began to move and a few moments passed in silence as Niles drove and Frasier watched his former hometown pass by out the window. 
“How goes the college admission adventure?” Frasier asked, breaking the silence.
Niles smiled broadly, “Very well. Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Stanford, Yale .”
“Ah, but what about Harvard?” Frasier questioned. 
Niles scoffed, “Of course, but I don’t know why he would ever want to go there.”
Frasier’s eye roll was far from hidden.

Three Weeks Earlier

“Mom?”
Daphne turned to see her eldest child and only son standing in the kitchen door with a sheepish look that made him look so similar to his father. 
“What is it, love?” she asked, offering him a warm smile.
David took a few cautious steps into the kitchen.
Daphne studied his face and frowned, “Is something wrong?”
He flopped into a chair and ran a hand through his honey-colored hair, “How do you think Dad would feel if I didn’t go to Yale?”
Daphne’s face fell, “Did you not get accepted?”
David sighed and put a letter on the table, “It’s not that--”
She picked up the paper and scanned it; it was an acceptance letter-- one of many that David had received. Setting the letter down, Daphne once again saw her son’s troubled face. He needed a distraction, something idle he could do while processing his thoughts. 

Daphne stood and walked to the sink where she had been washing vegetables for the night’s dinner. 
“Why don’t you give me a hand peeling and chopping these?” she asked, offering him a paring knife. 
He half-smiled as he took her up on the offer. 
Their work found a steady and comfortable rhythm and Daphne couldn’t help but smile, remembering all the times she had cooked with his father and found a similar rhythm.
Finally, David spoke. 
“I… don’t want to go to Yale.”
“Do you want to talk about why?” she asked.
He took a deep breath, “Because I don’t want to go to college.”
Daphne was shocked, but determined to not let David see it. Instead, she calmly asked, “Well. Then what do you want to do?”
He paused, gathering his thoughts, “I want to be a chef.”
Daphne’s eyebrows raised in surprise, “Do you?”
David smiled a little, “Yeah. My teachers say I’m good at cooking and I’ve been talking to Chef Marcel about it, he thinks I’m cut out for it.”
“Well, if that’s what you want,” Daphne said.
“I’m just worried about telling Dad,” David said, staring at a potato in his hand, “Worried that he’ll be disappointed in me.”
“Oh, David,” Daphne said kindly, dropping her knife and turning to look at her son, “Your father could never be disappointed in you. Not for following your dreams.”
David looked up at his mother, clearly fighting back tears.
“Come here,” she said, opening her arms. 
David moved to embrace his mother. She held him tightly. Despite the fact that he was almost 18 years old and just shy of 6 feet tall, she would never stop thinking of him as that tiny baby she held on that veterinary exam table back in 2004.
“Your dad and I are so proud of you, David, no matter what you decide to do with your life.”
When they separated from the hug, she saw that David, though still a bit teary, was now smiling.
“Now, let’s get these vegetables peeled before your dad gets home, hm?” she smiled at him and picked up her knife once more.
David nodded and picked up his knife as well.
After another moment of working, he spoke up, “Do you think I could cook dinner when Uncle Frasier visits next month?”
Daphne smiled, “I think that sounds wonderful, love.”

Present Day

Frasier and Niles had barely gotten the door shut behind them before stomping footsteps and shouts sounded from the stairway.
“Oh wonderful,” Niles snarked, “Frasier, your nieces are home.”
Frasier smirked at his brother as the elder of the Crane daughters appeared on the landing holding what appeared to be a piece of broken pottery.
“Dad !” she shouted, spotting her father, “Thank god you’re here. Isabel has ruined the pot I made for my bougainvillea bonsai!”
The culprit soon bounded down the stairs, a frantic mess in a lime green shirt, “Dad, whatever she’s saying, I didn’t do it!”
“Compelling argument, Isabel,” Niles responded, calmly.
The elder daughter cast an accusatory finger toward her younger sister and said, “She broke it playing with that ball in the hallway!”
“I told you it was an accident!” Isabel shouted back at her sister. 
“A likely story! ”
“Lilian, please,” Niles said, gesturing for his older daughter to lower her voice, “Let’s all calm down, alright.”
Lilian scoffed and Isabel rolled her eyes, but neither shouted at the other, which certainly seemed like progress. 
“May I?” Niles asked, holding out his hand to take the broken pot from Lilian. 
She sighed, but handed it over for her father to inspect. 
Calmly looking up from the broken pieces, Niles asked, “Where was this when it broke?”
“The hall table,” Lilian said, suddenly looking a bit more sheepish.
Niles nodded, “Mmhmm. And haven’t we learned that the hall table isn’t a safe place to keep our fragile crafts?”
Lilian sighed, but nodded.
His eyes turned to his younger daughter, “Were you throwing a ball in the hallway?”
“Kicking,” Isabel muttered under her breath. 
“Either way, you know better than to do that.”
“I said I’m sorry,” Isabel said, exasperated. 
“‘Sorry’ will not bring back my bonsai pot,” Lilian replied. 
Niles held up his hand to stop the argument before it could continue. 
“Lilian, I would recommend that you look into the Japanese art of kintsugi. A method of repairing broken pottery with glue mixed with powdered gold or silver,” he said, returning to the broken pieces to his daughter, “It looks like the break was clean and I think that it would make for a very special piece.”
Lilian looked thoughtfully at the pieces of pottery in her hands before nodding. Isabel, meanwhile, looked at her sister with a smug expression, clearly feeling that she had emerged from this encounter victorious.
“Isabel,” Niles said as her face fell, “You’re going to help your sister buy any supplies that she may need for the repair and you are going to provide assistance with the work. Alright?”
Isabel’s face had gone from merely fallen to a full scowl. 
“It’s that or you’re grounded for two weeks,” Niles countered.
The scowl quickly evaporated and, instead, she turned to her sister and said, “Just tell me when you go to the art store.”
“And be sure to let me see the finished product,” Frasier said, speaking up and finally drawing the girls’ attention to him. 
“Uncle Frasier!” they both shouted. Isabel launched herself at her uncle in something between a tackle and a hug, while her older sister moved more carefully to embrace him. 

“How are things going in here?” Niles asked, stepping into the kitchen while the girls caught up with their uncle, “Wow, it smells great.”
David’s head popped up from where he had been bent over a cookbook, “You think so?”
“Of course,” he said, walking around to look at a pot that Daphne was tending, “Ooh, what do we have here?”
“Nothing for you yet,” she said teasingly, sharply striking the side of the pot with her spoon.
Niles jumped slightly and, with a laugh in his voice, said “Yes, sous chef.”
Daphne rolled her eyes playfully, accepting the quick peck on the cheek that her husband leaned in for. “Is your brother here?” she asked.
“Hm?” Niles said, distractedly, looking at the dishes in the kitchen, “Oh, yes. He was welcomed by the full force of Hurricanes Lilian and Isabel.”
“Oh dear, were they fighting again?” Daphne asked. 
Niles chuckled, “Only when they were breathing.”
“What happened this time?”
“It seems that Isabel was playing in the hallway and accidentally broke Lilian’s pottery project.”
“I’ve told them both so many times--”
Niles held up a hand to calm his wife, “I took care of it. All was well when I left.”
“Until the next eruption,” David said, adjusting the temperature on the oven, “I’ve never seen anyone fight like they do.”
Daphne chuckled, “They’re just like your father and Uncle Frasier always were.”
“Really ?” David said, raising his eyebrows and looking at his father.
A light blush colored Niles’s cheeks, “Well, I don’t know that I would say--”
“Eerily identical,” Daphne said with an air of finality. 

After Niles left the kitchen to check on Frasier and the girls, Daphne turned to her son, “How are you feeling?”
David ran a hand along his jaw and nervously looked around at everything getting ready, “The soup’s basically ready to serve, the duck and vegetables should be done just in time, and dessert’s in the oven.”
Daphne nodded, noting everything that David mentioned, “And how about you?”
He laughed dryly, “I’m… more nervous than I expected.”
She smiled at him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders, “Nervous about the food or…?”
David nodded uncertainly, moving away to sit on the edge of a stool, “I-- I think the food’s alright. I’m… I’ve done everything right. Nothing’s obviously messed up. Dad said it smelled good and he didn’t mention anything seeming off, so…”
“So you’re not worried about the food,” his mother said, completing his thought.
He smiled shyly at her and shook his head just a little.
“Still worried about how your dad will react to your decision?”
David eventually nodded, a bit reluctantly, “Yeah.”
He stood up and walked around to the stove, obviously moving with no real purpose, practically pacing. “I mean, I… I know that he’s not going to be upset or disappointed or anything, I just… knowing it doesn’t mean that there’s not a little voice in the back of my head telling me that he might be, you know?” he said. 
Daphne smiled sympathetically at her son and rubbed a comforting hand over his shoulder. “He’ll be so proud of you, my love,” she said, giving his hand a little squeeze, “Especially knowing that you have already been accepted into culinary school.”
David gave a shy smile and a pink tinge colored his cheeks and ears, “Thanks, Mom.”

“Dinner was magnificent ,” Frasier said leaning toward his nephew who responded with a shy smile. 
“And you’ve not even had dessert,” Daphne responded, returning to the room with the cherry clafoutis that had been waiting in the kitchen.
“Thanks, Mom,” David said, watching her place the cake on the table.
“Oh, David, this looks fantastic,” his father said, “Remind me to write thank you notes to your cooking teachers.”
David laughed, ears turning pink again, as he helped his mother serve dessert. 
He watched as his family tucked in to the clafoutis, involuntarily holding his breath until they showed signs of enjoying the dessert. 
“You know,” Niles spoke, “I was reading about the culinary society at Yale the other day.”
David quickly looked at his mother who met his eyes with a calm expression.
“I was actually wanting to tell you all something about that,” he said, taking a deep breath, “I, uh-- I’ve decided to, uh… I’m… Not going to Yale.”
Niles seemed frozen.
Frasier, however, was not. “Ha !” he declared with a wide smile, “Of course you aren’t! Not when you were accepted to Harvard!”
This triggered a response from Niles, who cried out, “Oh, David, no!”
David seemed shell-shocked. This had not been the response he had expected; though, based on the look on his mother’s face, he shouldn’t have been surprised. 
“I’m not going to Harvard either,” he spoke up, ending his uncle’s gloating. 
Frasier seemed to deflate while Niles cocked his head in slight confusion, ignoring his brother’s dramatics.
David answered his father’s unasked questions, “I’ve been accepted into culinary school here in Seattle.”
“Culinary school,” Niles echoed with an unreadable face.
Daphne motioned to the living room and escorted Frasier and the girls out of the room so that David and Niles could talk things through in private. David barely even noticed them leaving, he was so focused on his father. 
“My teachers think that I’m really good at cooking. I talked to the counselor at school and we figured out what I need to do--”
“David--”
“Chef Marcel thinks that I have what it takes to be a chef. He helped me get into the school--”
“David--”
“He said that I could keep working at the restaurant while I’m studying and that if I needed any help--”
“David ,” Niles said, tone finally breaking through his son’s rambling speech.
The young man stopped speaking and sank into his chair, looking very much like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. 
“You don’t have to explain yourself, David,” Niles said, looking at his son, “I’m just…”
“I know you’re probably disappointed that I don’t want to be a psychologist. That I’m not going to Yale.”
“You want to be a chef?”
David couldn’t meet his father’s eyes, “I do.”
Niles sighed and, when David looked up at his father, he saw a warm smile on his face. 
“Dad?”
Before he had a chance to think about anything else, he was wrapped in his father’s warm embrace.
“I’m so proud of you, son,” Niles said, voice quiet but steady.
David clung to his father and felt tears escaping his eyes, “Really?”
“Oh god, yes,” Niles said, “More than you can imagine.”
“Even though I’m not going to Yale?”
Niles pulled away from the embrace and instead gently placed a palm on either side of his son’s face, holding David’s eyes with his own, “What your job is, where you go to school, none of that matters to me. What matters to me, David Martin Crane, is that you are happy. That you feel fulfilled. And that you chase down your dreams, whatever they may be.”
David sniffled, “Dad.”
“Hey, now, none of that,” Niles said with a smile that belied the tears in his own eyes. He used his thumbs to wipe the tears from David’s face.
“I just have one caveat,” his father said. 
David looked at him, with worry in his eyes.
“You’ll cater my dinner parties,” Niles joked. 
David laughed, “Dad.”
“I mean, if my son is a famous chef…”
“Dad .”
“Seriously, though, the duck à l'orange tonight was exquisite .”
“Really ?”
“I never lie about French cuisine, son.”
David cracked a smile, “Thanks, Dad.”
Niles gave his son a little hug, “I love you, son.”
“Love you, too, Dad.”

Chapter Text

“Niles, have you seen this?” Daphne asked, walking into her husband’s office with some sort of clothing in her hands.
He looked up from his computer and quirked an eyebrow questioningly, “No? What is it?”
She held the item out to him, “It’s the shirt that Izzy wore to school yesterday.”
Niles took it in his hand and looked at the area that she gestured toward, “Is it torn?”
“And there are stains all over it.”
He held out the shirt and noticed the grass and dirt stains on the orange material, “How did that happen?”
“I don’t know,” Daphne responded, taking the shirt back from him. 
“She’s not mentioned anything to me,” Niles said, looking puzzled, “Has she said anything to you?”
Daphne shook her head, frowning and studying the shirt once more.
Niles looked up, “You don’t think she’s been in a fight, do you?”
Her head snapped up, “She wouldn’t start a fight!”
He shook his head, standing and walking around to sit on the corner of his desk closer to Daphne, “You’re right; the only fight she’d ever start would be with her sister. And we both know that Lilian never keeps their fights secret.”
There was a pause as both worried silently. 
Niles bit his lip, troubled by a thought that he suddenly had and especially worried about how to bring it up without worrying his wife even more.
“What if… she didn’t start the fight?” he said, carefully.
“What are you saying?”
“Well,” Niles paused, considering every word he was about to say, “what if she’s being bullied?”
“By someone at school?”
Niles opened his mouth to speak, but he was cut off by his wife’s worried words. 
“The teachers are so involved and we’ve never had trouble there before--”
“Daph--” Niles tried to interrupt. 
“David and Lily never mentioned anything, but do you think--”
“Darling--”
“I mean, I know that Izzy is small for her age, but--”
“Daphne ,” he said, reaching out and taking her hand, finally silencing her rambling.
She turned to face him and he took her other hand with his, drawing her to face him completely.
“Why don’t we just ask her about the shirt today when she gets home from school?” he suggested, “And if we’re still worried after talking with her, I’ll go to the school tomorrow and have a talk with her teachers and see if they know if there’s an issue.”
Daphne sighed.
Niles squeezed her hands and she gave a tight-lipped smile-- clearly not completely reassured, but willing to try her husband’s plan.
The quiet moment was suddenly interrupted by the sound of the front door opening and the hurried footsteps of their teenage daughters arriving home from school. 
He gave his wife a half smile and nodded his head toward the door of the office.

By the time Niles and Daphne made it to the front room, Isabel was halfway to the stairwell. When he saw her, Niles’s eyes went wide as saucers and Daphne gasped, “Isabel !”
Isabel froze in place, squeezing her eyes shut tight before turning to face her parents. “Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad,” she said with a nervous half smile, not unlike the one that Niles had given Daphne mere moments earlier. 
However, this half smile was far less reassuring. In fact, any amount of reassurance it might have granted was far overruled by the grass and dirt stains on Isabel’s clothes, the mud caked on her shoes, her scraped knee, and the bruise that seemed to be blooming just beneath the hem of her shirt sleeve. 
“Isabel,” Niles said, trying to keep his voice steady even though the tiny rivulet of blood making its way down his daughter’s leg had him feeling very wobbly on his feet, “are you alright?”
She sighed, seemingly relieved by the direction that the line of questioning had taken. “Yeah, Dad, I’m fine,” she said with a smile that was surely supposed to be reassuring, but did not have the intended effect on her parents. 
“Your clothes,” he said, voice beginning to show the stress he was feeling.
Daphne took over for her husband, much to his relief, “What happened, Izzy? You’re covered in mud and you’re bleeding!”
“Oh, am I bleeding? I hadn’t noticed” Isabel said, trying to be casual and pretending to just be noticing the scrape on her knee. Unfortunately for her, she had inherited one of her father’s more peculiar traits. Her hand flew to pinch the bridge of her nose, hoping to kill the nosebleed before it began. However, she wasn’t completely successful and a drip of blood escaped her nostril. 
Daphne heard Niles brace himself on the chair next to him, still trying to maintain an air of collected authority while being seconds from fainting. “Oh, let’s get you cleaned up before your father passes out,” she said, grabbing her daughter’s hand and sweeping her out of the room toward the master bath where most of the first aid supplies were stored. 

Isabel sat on the edge of the bathtub, allowing her mother to clean the mud from her and tend to her wounds.
“How did this happen, Izzy?” Daphne asked, applying a bandage to her daughter’s knee.
“I, uh, stopped at the park on my way home from school,” Isabel began as her mother moved to clean the dirt and blood from her face, “I was on the swings with Ethan and he bet that I wouldn’t jump out, so I did, and… I didn’t exactly stick the landing.”
The lie was so smooth and practiced that Daphne might have never caught on had it not been for a small ruby of fresh blood shimmering atop the dried blood under Isabel’s nose. Without saying a thing, she wiped it clean and decided that it was best that the plan move on to phase two.
However, she made no indication to Isabel that she didn’t believe her. Instead she tweaked the 14-year-old’s nose and said, “All better now, eh? You’ll probably be wanting an ice pack for that arm. Why don’t you go get one out of the kitchen?”
Izzy smiled, confident that her mother was completely fleeced, “Thanks, Mom.”

When Daphne returned to the front room, she found her husband sitting and idly thumbing through a magazine.
“Well?” he asked, “How’d it go?”
She grimaced, “I think you need to go up to the school tomorrow.”
Niles seemed to deflate.

The next day, Niles told the girls that he would pick them up from school, prompting them each to remind him that they had activities after school, so he wouldn’t need to be there until at least an hour after dismissal. Of course, he had ulterior motives for his trip and arrived only shortly after the last bell rang.
As he should have expected for the time of day, the parking lot was filled with vehicles-- parents picking up students, teachers and staff who had not yet ended their work day, even some cars belonging to older students. This meant that he had to park quite a distance from the front entrance to the school. Exiting his car, he grumbled about the distance he would have to walk-- all the way around the sports fields-- and the weather, which was threatening rain. 
He had almost made it to the main walkway around the building when he heard a shout from the sports field nearest him, “Hey, Izzy, over here!”
He froze on the spot.
Was that coming from the field?
Were these bullies so brazen that they were harassing his daughter in the open?
In front of an audience, even?
Quickly, he made his way to the chain link fence surrounding the field and what he saw caused him to drop his umbrella and his jaw.

Isabel wasn’t being bullied.
Far from it.
She was…
She was playing a sport.
Isabel was playing soccer.
Niles obviously didn’t know enough about the sport to know if she was playing well or not, but she was playing. She was running and kicking and doing all the other things that one does in soccer. 
He was transfixed. Completely frozen in place while he watched her.
His trance was finally broken by a voice asking, “Hey, you’re Izzy’s dad, right?”
Niles shook his head to regain a sense of his surroundings, then turned to see a woman-- another parent-- looking at him.
“Oh, uh, yes. I am,” he said, fumbling for words as he bent down to retrieve his umbrella. 
The woman continued talking to him, “You know the parents are allowed to go sit on the bleachers while their kids are playing, right? You can go sit down and watch from in there.” The woman gestured toward the metal risers on the other side of the fence.
“I probably shouldn’t,” he said, suddenly concerned that Isabel would be embarrassed by his presence, after all, she had been keeping this a secret from him.
The other parent waved away his concerns, “Oh, come on. Izzy would love to know you were watching.
“I really don’t think--” he stopped midway through his refusal. This was a situation he had never foreseen himself dealing with. Sure, he had imagined watching his children in orchestra or choir, in school plays and spelling bees, debates and recitals, but never sports. Not even in his wildest dreams. He was certain that they were too like him to ever play sports, maybe to even want to play sports. His argument died in his throat and he, instead, followed the mom around to the stands. 

Still a bit unsure of himself, he sat on the edge of the bench-- ready to flee at a moment’s notice. 
Instead, he watched, enthralled. 
Not by the sport. 
He still had no idea what was happening there.
By his daughter. 
She seemed so focused, so determined, and yet so comfortable and free. Completely unlike how he had ever felt while playing anything even remotely resembling a sport (with rare exception).
Other girls passed the ball to Izzy and Izzy passed the ball to other girls. At one point, someone scored a point, but Izzy wasn’t the one to do so, so Niles hardly cared. 
He nearly leapt onto the field to check on her when she dove feet-first after the ball at one point, but she quickly stood up, unfazed by the mud and grass all over her. 
When the coach shouted, “Crane!” he held his breath, expecting a berating the likes of which he and Frasier had received many times by similarly titled officials. Instead, he saw the coach pat Isabel on the shoulder and praise her, “Good hustle out there,” as she made her way to the bench to rest and rehydrate. 

Niles meant to leave before practice ended-- before Isabel could catch him spying-- but he couldn’t make himself leave.
After a short meeting, the coach dismissed the players and they began to walk toward the bleachers and the exit beyond them.
Niles froze; he knew that Isabel would spot him soon and he had not prepared himself for this situation.
Unfortunately for him, he didn’t have time to plan anything out before he heard his daughter’s voice call out, “Dad?”
“Oh!” he said with a tone of forced casualness, “Hey there, kid. What’s going on?”
Isabel looked at her father as though he had grown a second head, “Dad, what are you doing here?”
“I’m picking you and your sister up from school today, remember?”
“No, I mean here here. Why aren’t you in the car?”
“Well, I was walking up to the school to talk with your teacher--”
“You were going to talk with Mrs. Ross? Why? Is something wrong?”
“Isabel, your mom and I have been worried about you.”
“Worried about me? Why?”
“Well,” Niles said, gesturing for his daughter to sit on the bench beside him, “your mom found your torn shirt. And then you came home yesterday all bruised and bloody. We were… well, we were worried that you were being bullied.”
“Really ?” she asked, incredulously, “So, I guess Mom didn’t buy the ‘fell off the swings’ story, huh?”
He chuckled a little, “Unfortunately for you, you inherited my biggest tell.” He winked at her while tapping the side of his nose. 
Isabel gave a somewhat dry laugh.
“Why didn’t you just tell us that you were playing soccer?” Niles asked.
She sighed, turning to look at the field instead of her father, “I didn’t want you guys to worry about me.”
“And you thought that hiding a torn shirt, coming home with blood literally dripping down your leg, and making up ridiculous stories to explain it would stop us from worrying about you?” he said, fixing her with a stare, hoping that hearing it repeated would make her realize how silly her plan had been.
Isabel’s eyes moved to her feet and she suddenly looked a lot more sheepish, “I guess I also… didn’t want you guys to be disappointed in me.”
“Disappointed?” Niles asked, “Because you’re playing a sport? I know we’re not the most athletic family, but--”
“Not because I’m playing a sport,” she interrupted, “because I… might not make the team.”
“What?” Niles asked, cocking his head in confusion as he looked at his daughter.
“These are just tryouts for the team next year. I’ve not made the cut yet. I might not be on the team,” Isabel tried to explain.
Her father continued to look at her confusedly. 
“I know how you and Mom are. You’re just… so… proud of everything we do and you’re so… I don’t know. I just… I didn’t want to tell you guys that I was doing something and build up your expectations and everything and then… I’m not good enough to actually do it.”
The puzzle finally began to click into place inside Niles’s mind. “Oh, okay, I see,” he said, nodding, “You were worried that telling us that you were playing soccer would build us up and, should you fail to make the team, you would have to tell us and it would be popping our bubble, so to speak?”
Isabel nodded.
“So, you thought that if we never had a chance to blow a bubble, you wouldn’t have to worry about popping it, am I right?”
Another nod.
He nodded along with her and they sat in silence for a moment, “I understand. I want you to know that lying to your mother and me was not the right decision to make and that, generally speaking, it is preferable that you don’t keep secrets like this from your parents, but… I do understand why you were motivated to do so.”
Isabel sighed and looked ashamed, casting her eyes toward the grassy ground beneath the bleachers. 
He placed a hand on her shoulder, encouraging her to look his way, “Your mother and I would have gotten excited if you told us that you were trying out for soccer. And if, and I do mean if , you don’t make the team, we would have been disappointed. But we wouldn’t be disappointed with you . We would have been disappointed for you .”
Shyly, she looked up at her father, meeting his eyes with eyes so similar in hue that it almost seemed uncanny.
“All we want is for you to be happy. You and David and Lilian,” he explained, “That’s just part of our job as parents. That isn’t dependent on your grades or you making a team or anything like that. As long as you’re safe and following your dreams, that’s all we could ask for. Do you understand?”
She nodded almost imperceptibly. 
Niles gave her a little crooked smile before patting her on the back and saying, “Let’s go find your sister and head home, okay?”
Isabel smiled at her father and stood with him to begin walking toward the school.
“Hey, Dad?” she asked, “Do you think maybe we could keep this a secret from Mom until I know if I made the team?”
He scoffed, placing a hand on her shoulder, “You of all people should know that I can’t lie to your mother.”
She just laughed.

When they returned home, Daphne was waiting in the front room. After greeting Lilian, she cast her eyes over their youngest, inspecting for any new damages. 
“Hey, Mom,” Isabel said with a smile, letting her mother see that, aside from some stains, there were no new battle scars.
Daphne wrapped the girl in a tight hug, prompting Isabel to feign choking and gasping for air until she was released.
“Gotta go do some homework,” she said, rushing out of the room.
The look that Daphne gave Niles after Isabel’s departure clearly showed that she was still very worried about their youngest child. 
“What did you find out?” she asked urgently.
Niles smiled a little, taking his wife’s hand, “She’s fine.”
“She’s not fighting?”
“No.”
“Or being bullied?”
“Not at all.”
“So what’s going on with the stains and the bruises and all that?”
Niles leaned over, looking up the stairwell to ensure that Isabel wasn’t in earshot. On the car ride home, she had “convinced him” to keep the tryouts between them until the final roster was released next week. However, Niles knew that Daphne was far too worried for him to keep her in the dark.
“Isabel’s playing a sport!” he said, keeping his voice low.
“She’s what?!” Daphne exclaimed, absolutely stunned.
“Shh, shh, shh,” he shushed her, pressing his index finger to his lips, “I told her that I was going to keep this a secret for another week. She can’t know that you know.”
Her next question was asked in a lowered voice, “How did you find out?”
“I was walking up to the school and saw her at practice.”
“What does she play?”
“Soccer.”
“Is she good?”
“I have no idea ,” Niles confessed.
Daphne rolled her eyes.
He chimed in, “But the coach pat her on the shoulder and told her ‘good hustle.’ That’s good, right?”
His wife giggled just a little. Niles’s enthusiasm was infectious and she loved how supportive he was of their children, even when he had absolutely no understanding at all of the details of their interests.

One week later, Isabel rushed through the front door, riding a tidal wave of excitement and pure, unadulterated joy.
Luckily for Niles, Daphne doesn’t get nosebleeds when she lies

Chapter Text

“If you need us, call us and we’ll be on the next flight. Promise,” Daphne said, fighting back tears as she held her middle child’s face in her hands.
Lilian gave a half-smile and assured her mother, “I know, Mom.”
“Your uncle can be here even quicker, if he needs to,” tears began leaking out of Daphne’s eyes. 
Her daughter nodded, “I know, Mom.”
“And she has Frederick’s address and phone number if there’s a real emergency,” Niles assured his wife, placing his hands on her shoulders. 
“I’ll be fine, Mom. Don’t worry about me,” Lillian assured her. 
At her child’s words, Daphne broke down into tears and all but collapsed into her daughter’s arms. Lilian wrapped her arms around her mother, holding her tightly and assuring her that she would be fine. As she did, she may have let a few tears of her own escape. 
Niles placed his hand on the small of his wife’s back and said quietly, “Darling, if we don’t leave soon, we’ll miss our flight.”
Daphne relinquished her grip on her child and nodded, tears still flowing. She reached to squeeze Lilian’s hand and sobbed, “I love you.”
Lilian wiped tears from her eyes with her free hand and smiled, “Love you, too, Mom.”
Daphne blinked back tears, nodded, and began walking out of her daughter’s dormitory, leaving Niles and Lilian in the room alone. 
“You’re going to love it here,” he told her, eyes ringed with red and voice a little strained. 
Lilian smiled at her father, “I know I will.”
“We’ll miss you at home, though.”
“I’ll miss being home… even Izzy.”
Niles smirked and gave a small laugh, thinking about all of his daughters’ squabbles over the years, “I know how that feels.”
Silence hung heavy between them for a moment as neither of them knew what to say. 
Finally, Lilian broke the silence, launching herself into her father’s arms and sobbing, “I love you, Dad.”
Niles squeezed his daughter as tightly as possible, letting his own tears fall, “I love you, too, Lily-bug.”

The return from Connecticut to Seattle took roughly nine and a half hours-- almost 8 of those hours were spent actually on a plane-- arriving back in the Northwest at almost 2 in the morning. 
By the time Niles and Daphne arrived home, the house was dark and silent. They were too tired to even bother turning on lights, instead stumbling through the darkness to their bedroom before collapsing into the bed. 
Unfortunately, even as tired as they were, neither of them seemed to be able to sleep.   
“It’s strange, isn’t it?” Daphne voiced into the darkness.
“Hm?” Niles asked, staring at the ceiling.
“Not having all of them here.”
“Oh.”
Thick silence hung in the room like a blanket.
“Maybe it would have been easier if David had gone to college,” Daphne postulated. 
Niles shifted to look at her profile, “You think so?”
She cut her eyes to meet his, “No.”
He shook his head in agreement. 
“She’ll be fine, you know,” Niles offered, reaching out to squeeze his wife’s hand, “I made it and she’s a lot stronger than I was.”
Daphne smiled sadly.
“And we still have David and Isabel here,” he offered.
A sob escaped her, “For now.”
“Oh, Daph,” he said, moving to take her in his arms. His hand moved up and down her back, hoping to soothe her, but knowing deep down that there wasn’t really anything he could do to alleviate her pain. 
“You did a great job, you know,” Niles said.
She raised her head to look at him.
“Raising our children,” he clarified, “You’re such a fantastic mother.”
Daphne smiled sadly, laying her head on her husband’s chest. “You’re a wonderful father,” she mumbled, sleepily. 
He smiled back at her, continuing to rub her back until he felt her breathing deepen and knew that she had fallen asleep. 
“It’s going to be a lot more quiet around here,” he said to no one, yawning, and soon following his wife into a deep slumber.

The silence didn’t last.
It was barely 7 am before Niles and Daphne were awoken by the sound of David moving around the house. Groggily, Niles made his way to the kitchen, where his son was hard at work on something. 
David jumped when he finally turned and noticed his disheveled father standing in the kitchen doorway. “I didn’t wake you up, did I?” he asked, sheepishly. 
Niles just fixed him with a stare that somehow still intimidated David, despite the fact that he was now 21 and stood at least two inches taller than his father. 
“Sorry,” he apologized, rubbing his hand over his mussed hair, “I was trying to make breakfast for you guys.”
Niles smiled a lazy half-smile and shook his head, sighing, before allowing himself to collapse into a chair at the kitchen table. 
“How was Lily?” David asked. 
His father yawned, “She’ll be fine. I think she’ll really like it there.”
David nodded as he continued cooking, “How about Mom?”
Niles chuckled dryly, “That’s… a different matter.”
“Did she cry?” David asked, sliding an omelet onto a plate. 
Niles rubbed a hand over his cheek, feeling the stubble rough on his jaw, “It was… difficult. Not just for your mother.”
David nodded, “It’s going to take some time to get used to not having her around.”
His father nodded as the door opened and his mother entered the room.
“Just in time,” David said with a smile, carrying plates to the table.  

After breakfast, Niles and Daphne drove to Nervosa to meet Roz and pick up Isabel.  
“Hey guys, how’re you doing?” Roz asked, spotting her friends and waving them over to the table occupied by herself and the 16-year-old. 
Niles simply groaned, which Daphne translated, “We got home at almost 3 am and David woke us up at 7 with breakfast.”
Roz chuckled a little, “Never thought I’d hear someone complain about their live-in chef cooking them breakfast.”
Niles and Daphne both smiled slightly, in spite of themselves. 
“I still don’t understand why I couldn’t have stayed home with David,” Isabel grumbled.
“Because your brother is barely home,” Niles explained, “And you have proven that you cannot be trusted unsupervised in the kitchen. Need I remind you of the ravioli incident?”
Isabel rolled her eyes and groaned, but dropped her argument. 
“Oh, by the way, Mom, you’ll never guess who dropped by for a visit,” Isabel began and this time it was Roz who rolled her eyes. 
Looking between her daughter and her friend, Daphne asked, “Who?”
“Well well well, look ‘o we ‘ave ‘ere,” came a voice from the doorway of the cafe, “if it isn’t my dear little sister and ‘er husband. What a coincidence.”
“Speak of the devil,” Roz groaned, as Daphne’s head whipped around to see Simon entering the room.
“Simon!” she gasped, “What are you doing here?”
He pulled a chair up to their table and lazily draped himself over the seat, “Well, like the good son that I am, I decided that it had been far too long since I had given a visit to our dear old mum, so I hopped a flight. Then, while I was visiting, I found out about the future pride of the Moon family.”
Daphne narrowed her eyes, “What are you talking about.”
Simon slung an arm around Isabel, “You never told me we had a footballer in the family, Stilts!”
Isabel rolled her eyes and shrugged out of her uncle’s side-hug.
“You know, United’s got a womens’ side now,” he said, pointing toward his niece, “you keep this up and you’ll be a Red Devil yet.”
“If I do are you gonna get kicked out of their stadium, too?” Isabel asked pointedly. 
Daphne’s head whipped around to her brother, “ Simon ! What happened?!”
Isabel smirked, “Uncle Simon got banned from the soccer complex.”
“Banned ?” Niles asked, incredulously. 
Simon held up a hand in a lazy defense, “If pyrotechnics were prohibited, they should have had a sign saying so.”
“Fireworks are illegal in Seattle, you idiot,” Roz admonished him.
He shrugged.
She continued, “You’re lucky the police let you off with a warning.”
“On an unrelated note, do any of you know anyone interested in buying 5 cartons of road flares?”

“Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad.”
“Hey, Lily,” Niles said, leaning over Daphne’s shoulder to see his daughter’s face on the screen of her tablet. 
“How was your first week, sweetheart?” Daphne asked. 
Lilian smiled, “It was great.”
As their daughter told them all about her first week of classes, Niles and Daphne shared a look and a small smile. 
Yeah, things were going to be different, but everything was going to be okay.